The Maghreb experience: a challenge to the rational myths of economics

Abstract

Colonial domination gave way to ‘development through regulation’ which received support from the Third World elites. Historically, the elites of the South have usually imported everything, including the explanation for the problems of their own societies: ‘from the discourse (keys in head), to the factory (keys in hand)’. In economic development circles, the Third World elites play the role of sterile classes without the capacity to create ‘development’. On the world economic scene, the development industry has concentrated conceptual ability and innovatory capacity in the countries transmitting development, while the sterile classes head what are essentially rentiereconomies (Philippe Hugon, 1994). Development, despite its impressive array of macro models, all too often turns out to be merely a source of profit for the closed club of the great economic powers of the world. But this relationship cannot be maintained without flourishing markets for primary commodities (for example, oil), external assistance, geopolitical rents, demographic pressures that can be kept within the redistribution capacity of rents, industrial sub‐contracting by transnationals (when this is feasible), and so on. If one or more of these conditions change, inevitably there is instability, if not explosions of all kinds. In fact, the results have been disastrous everywhere, except for the Asian development experiences whose successes have however been vitiated by the recent stock exchange crashes. This has challenged both the usual theory and practice of thinking and acting as far as North/South relationships are concerned — as evinced by recent international events. The changes that are taking place, however, cannot be understood with the conceptual paradigms of yesterday. This ‘interpretation powerlessness’ can today be seen in the various geographical regions of the world. Examples are the Arab world, that ‘decadent old merchant’, and sub‐Saharan Africa, which is being massacred by ‘ethnic’ conflicts and endless external interventions. For these areas, it is all too clear that development is above all a source of profit for the capitalist economies of the North.